Woman Who Could Not Forget (44 page)

Kashiwashobo then made confusing and contradictory statements to the Associated Press in a story released on February 24, 1999. Haga told the AP that Kashiwashobo had “no obligation to consult with her about the other book because it is a different project,” yet insisted that they would cancel Iris’s book if she did not agree to allow the simultaneous release of
The Nanking Massacre and the Japanese
. “We will not publish her book alone,” Haga said.

Iris also told us that she had proof that Haga’s original plan was to sell the other book as a supplement—indeed, a “supplement that points out errors in the original.” In February, a press release was posted on the Internet to announce a professional luncheon that would be hosted by Hiraku Haga and professor Akira Fujiwara on February 24 at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Tokyo. (The luncheon was later cancelled when Kashiwashobo postponed publication of both books.) The title of the lunch discussion was to be “Nanking 1937? What Really Happened?” In the announcement, it stated “. . . The publisher picked a highly unusual—and arguably unprecedented—path, combining a faithful, completely word-for-word translation and a separate supplement that points out errors in the original and contains essays on the event. . . .”

Iris felt that this was a complete breach of contract. For translation, the publishing house only had the right to faithfully translate the original content of a book into a foreign language, and there was nothing in the contract that said that the publisher had the right to reinterpret the book’s contents.

In a sense we all agreed, and we felt relief when Kashiwashobo stopped the publication of the Japanese edition of Iris’s book. We were glad it was over. We told Iris it seemed it was not the right time for her book to be published in Japan, although the Japanese people deserved to know their own history better. “Like it or not,” Iris said, “it’s their history!”

I
ris’s idea to write about the Chinese in America as her next book’s topic came from her many tours for
The Rape of Nanking
. In her introduction to
The Chinese in America
, published in 2003, she wrote, “As I toured the United States and Canada giving talks on the subject [the Rape of Nanking], I encountered vibrant Chinese American communities that I had not even known existed. The people I met ranged from descendants of transcontinental railroad workers to new immigrants studying here on scholarships, from illiterate factory workers to Nobel laureates at leading universities, from elderly survivors of Japanese wartime atrocities to baby girls adopted by white parents.”

She continued: “At first, I feared the subject might [be] too broad, but I couldn’t let go of the idea of exploring the history of my people. Moreover, I believed I had a personal obligation to write an honest history of Chinese America, to dispel the offensive stereotypes that had long permeated the U.S. news and entertainment media.” This was a project she was passionate about, and she devoted four years to writing it.

As promised, when Iris returned from Renaissance Weekend at the beginning of 1999, she began actively working on
The Chinese in America
. The plan for the book, she said, was to collect as many materials as possible and then to write a detailed outline. She had been contacting many of her friends and asking them to give her leads on how to find source materials. Her friends in immigration research suggested several places to look for the records of Chinese immigrants. Iris planned to visit the U.S. National Archives, Bay area archives in California, and museums such as the Chinese Historical Society in San Francisco, Angel Island, and the San Bruno branch of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. She also told us she was going to the UC-Berkeley East Asian library to do research.

Iris spent one week at UC-Berkeley in January 1999, intensively copying source materials from Berkeley’s vast Ethnic Studies library. By the invitation of Him Mark Lai, the authoritative historian on Chinese-Americans, she attended the Chinese Historical Society meeting in San Francisco and met many authors who had written Chinese-American histories or stories. She bought $300 worth of books on Chinese-American history at the Society. She said that when she returned home, her car was filled with boxes of books and related materials. I also forwarded her any articles related to Chinese immigration that I found in Chinese or English newspapers and magazines.

Iris was awarded the San Francisco Chinatown Community Children’s Center (CCCC) Role Model Award in March 1999. She went to San Francisco for the occasion and took the opportunity to talk to Him Mark Lai at his home. On March 19, she wrote:

Dear Mom,

I just got home tonight, after spending the last few days in San Francisco. It’s been a busy last few days.

On Tuesday afternoon, at 3 p.m., I visited Him Mark Lai at his home in San Francisco. He lives on a hill on Union Street, . . . they are really wonderful, generous people. Him Mark is also a walking encyclopedia of Chinese American history. . . . He is well educated (he studied at UC Berkeley and used to work as an engineer). . . . He is constantly writing scholarly articles about Chinese American history, yet he toils outside of the world of academe, without much concern for title or recognition. He and his wife probably don’t have much money.

I spent a few hours talking to him, jotting down notes, browsing through his library, and then I drove to the gala fundraiser at the Asian Art Museum. Because of my tight schedule, I actually changed into my black evening gown in Him Mark Lai’s tiny bathroom.

At the museum, I gave my ten-minute speech and received the Chinatown Community Children’s Center Role Model award. Fred H. Lau, chief of the San Francisco Police Department, received the Community Service award. Lau is the highest ranking Chinese American police officer in the country. . . .

The gala organizers had actually assigned escorts for us. Lau was flanked by two Miss Chinatowns: Miss Chinatown USA and Miss Chinatown San Francisco. They looked pretty conspicuous in their tight satin chipaos and sparkling rhinestone crowns. I was to be escorted by “Mr. Asia,” but somehow he couldn’t make it, so the CCCC hastily brought in another handsome young man to replace him. Predictably, the press showed up to take pictures. (Him Mark Lai told me later that the Chinese newspapers raved about the elegance of my gown. I wonder if they actually reported anything that I SAID.)

I have to admit that I was delighted with the free hotel accommodations that I received as a result of accepting this award. Weeks ago, I told the CCCC that I needed to stay in a hotel in SF so I wouldn’t have to drive back to Sunnyvale late at night, when I was tired. Also, I wanted to take the opportunity to do some research around Chinatown. A board member of the CCCC saw to it that the Renaissance Parc 55 would donate a room for me for two nights. This room—#3164—turned out to be one of their luxurious, VIP corner suites. The place was bigger than my apartment in Sunnyvale!

On Wednesday, I slept late, and then visited the Gum Moon Woman’s Residence and Cameron House. Both were rescue missions during the early part of the century for Chinese women and children. Before, Gum Moon served primarily as an orphanage for young girls; today, Gum Moon operates as a Chinese boarding house with very reasonable rates (about $90 a week). Cameron House, which used to shelter girls who had been sold into prostitution, has become something of a YMCA-style center for Chinese youth.

The people at Gum Moon were kind to open their files for me. I spent the afternoon poring over the journal of the missionary Carrie Davis, written around the turn of the century, and leafing through the personal files on some of the former tenants at Gum Moon. (The stories broke my heart—stories of battered wives, women sold into prostitution, abandoned and neglected babies, little girls who had been raped or who themselves had been the product of rape, etc.) Just a few blocks away was Cameron House, and the staff there showed me the entrance of one of the underground tunnels that used to hide Chinese women from the tongs.

I spent the rest of Thursday back at Him Mark Lai’s home, where I asked him a million questions and took notes. He and his wife then invited me to dinner at Mon Kiang, a Hakka cuisine restaurant. I insisted on paying the bill because Him Mark had been so generous with his time. He told me that he was eager to help me because he knows I will do an excellent job, judging from my track record with THREAD OF THE SILKWORM and THE RAPE OF NANKING. Moreover, general histories on the Chinese in America are rare, he said. They place too much emphasis on the Cantonese-speaking Chinatown populations, and neglect to describe the migration of the Mandarin-speaking Taiwanese. In fact, not much has been written about the lives of the Chinese during the last 50 years, he told me.

Him told me that for years he had considered writing a general history of the Chinese. But now, in his 70s, he feels that his time would be better spent writing journal articles on more specialized topics—ones that other historians tend to ignore because of language barriers. His research requires intensive use of Chinese primary source materials, which many scholars cannot read. He genuinely believes that if he does not write these articles before his death, no one ever will.

As I write this I am suddenly moved—almost to tears—by the image of Him Mark Lai working alone, in relative obscurity, in his cramped little house filled with books and papers . . . an old man who has selflessly, tirelessly devoted most of his life to laying down the foundation for Chinese American history, so that other scholars might reap the rewards.

He said to me: “Your book is the book I should write, but never will.”

Love, Iris

Iris had used all her public appearances to appeal to the Chinese communities to give her any information or materials related to their family immigration experiences, such as personal stories and letters. She wanted to collect as many materials as possible for her book.

In the beginning of April 1999, Iris was going to the East Coast for a month, for a speaking engagement and to do research in the National Archives and Library of Congress in Washington. She wrote me on April 20, 1999:

Dear Mom,

Sometimes I forget how miserable research can be. I spent hours at the National Archives, opening dozens of boxes and flipping through thousands of documents. By the end of the process, my cuticles were bloody (from paper cuts) and my fingertips black with ink. Even now, I have a throbbing headache from the smell of rotting paper. Many of those boxes haven’t been opened for more than a century! Back in the late 1880s, the immigration officials stored documents by folding them into thirds (as you would fold a letter) and then bundling them together with red string. I’m sure the filing system worked well at the time, but it’s disastrous for historians and archivists. Some of the pages were so brittle that the pages would have snapped in two if I had tried to open them! (A couple documents were in such horrible condition they would have crumbled away into confetti.) I alerted the archivists to the problem, and they thanked me and said that the preservationists would work on the documents immediately. Apparently they use humidity or chemicals to relax the pages, and then protect them in transparent sleeves. . . .

Much love, Iris

Then, on April 22, 1999, while she was in D.C., she told us, in an e-mail, “Believe it or not, today Diana Zuckerman and I had a meeting with Hillary Clinton at the White House! More details to come. . . .”

It turned out, on very short notice, that Diana Zuckerman had arranged a private meeting between Iris and the First Lady for that day. Later, Iris told us that she briefed Mrs. Clinton on the Japanese war crimes during World War II and asked her support for a proposed bill on declassified documents on Unit 731. Iris promised to send her more materials to keep her informed. Mrs. Clinton also said to Iris that she’d love to see her next time Iris visited Washington.

After leaving D.C., Iris went to New York, where she attended the Committee of 100 meeting. She had been invited to be a member of the Committee of 100 when she hit the
New York Times
“Best Sellers” list. The Committee of 100 (or C-100 for short) is a Chinese-American organization established by prominent Chinese-American elites in 1990 (such as world-famous architect I. M. Pei and musician Yo-Yo Ma). In the meeting, Iris was chosen to be on the Role Model panel discussion with several famous Chinese-Americans such as David Ho, the biochemist who discovered the “cocktail” drug recipe for AIDS patients. In the panel discussion, Iris told the audience about her journey to become a writer and why she had wanted to write
The Rape of Nanking.

While Iris was trying to concentrate on her research for her next book, she still could not get away from the distraction generated by the translation of
The Rape of Nanking
in Japan. The whole thing finally ended in the middle of May when her publisher announced in a press release, “Basic Books and Japanese publisher Kashiwashobo have agreed to terminate their contract for the Japanese edition of
The Rape of Nanking
.” In the statement, John Donatich, the representative of the Perseus Books group, said: “The contract between us stipulated very clearly that no modifications to the text or artwork of Basic’s edition be made without the author’s consent. We believe a publisher to be neither advocate for nor critic of the book, but an entity that makes the book available for judgment by its public.” The statement also said, “Basic Books regrets that Kashiwashobo will not be publishing
The Rape of Nanking
and will begin seeking another Japanese publisher for the work.
The Rape of Nanking
is a fine book with important research and impassioned conviction, deserving publication in Japan.”